What Do We Owe Iraq?

Deb Amos, it turns out, is as eloquent on the page as she is on the airwaves as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio. More than a poetic read, though, Eclipseis
an innately human story about the toll of the war; it should be
required reading for all of those weighing bombing campaigns and land
assaults, and, indeed, for those pontificating in favor of them from
Washington think tanks or London editorial rooms.

This is not
about W. or Petraeus, COIN or Al Qaeda; this is the story of a middle
class -- the kind of vibrant, skilled middle class that one finds
lacking in almost every other country in the region -- and what the
neoconservative experiment meant for them.

It's potent because
it's accessible; because the stories Amos tells are about lawyers and
professionals, the college educated and often the more secular leaning.
These are, quite simply, the narratives many of us might have faced had
we been born Iraqi.

Leaving mosques and hijabs and cultural
barriers aside, this is about brothers having to watch sisters sell
themselves for their families to survive, about living in exile in
Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, unable to use one's education and skills
and uncertain how long one's savings can support his or her family.
Amos writes:

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Iraqi exiles in
Syria had turned to the sex trade for survival. Nearly every war brings
prostitution. But in Damascus, girls as young as ten were forced into
the trade by parents -- fathers or mothers, who made the deal and lived
off the proceeds. Officially, refugees were not permitted to hold jobs
and had to manage on whatever savings they had.

The broader
argument she offers -- she is, after all, a member of the Council on
Foreign Relations, and thus an academic, no matter how well she and her
writing hide the fact -- deals with the tilted balance of power in the
region, in favor of the Shi'a Muslims, comprising roughly 10-15
percent, and against the Sunnis, who make up the vast majority.

The
"exodus was not the narrative that the Bush administration wanted to
project, or acknowledge, and remained invisible to much of the world.
The U.S. security plan known as the surge was an American success
story, but it was a sideshow for those forced out of homes and
neighborhoods in a power struggle that used displacement and exile as a
weapon."

I'll never forget a network correspondent describing
how sectarian divisions ripped his Iraqi crew members apart over a span
of weeks, as those who had once been close friends became, quite
literally, mortal enemies. This was a society with perhaps 30 percent
marriage across the religious divide that was literally pulled apart at
its seams.

Amos builds to a brutally simple question: what do we owe these people?

To anyone who actually believes we've paid the debt, or anyone you know that holds the opinion, Eclipse ought to be on top of their nightstand.

Brian Till is a Research Fellow with the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. He writes on foreign policy, the strengths and shortcomings of the millennial generation, and the perils of the digital age. Previously a nationally syndicated columnist, he is the author of a book of interviews with former global leaders, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Fernando Henrique Cardosso, Bill Clinton, F.W. de Klerk, and Pervez Musharraf: Conversations With Power.